Jim Poulette: I expect to see more companies closing and leaving NH

BY JIM POULETTEMarch 23. 2014 3:46PMI read with interest Dave Soloman’s article about the Osram Sylvania plant closing. It is what I believe will be another in a long line of companies ultimately withdrawing from New Hampshire. It would be nice to think that what these companies produce in New Hampshire actually has some bearing on the reason for their closing, but I’m guessing not.

I worked for a company locally that basically pulled the rug out from hundreds of employees and literally moved everything to Mexico overnight on flatbed trucks. The reason: It simply made better business sense. I’m all for the free-market “business is business” attitude — as long as the federal government does not spend my tax dollars to push local jobs overseas to benefit foreign economies.

The real puzzling part for me is how anyone at all can be surprised by this. Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

If you recall, a lot of the Obama administration’s stimulus funds, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, ended up in the hands of companies and corporate entities overseas. Instead of creating jobs in America, the stimulus and other Obama policies created jobs or sent U.S. tax dollars to Finland, New Zealand, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, China, Denmark, South Korea, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Vietnam, Italy, Russia, Luxembourg, El Salvador, Great Britain, Spain, Japan and France.

Now that some of these countries have developed modern infrastructure and modern products financed by you and me, it makes business sense for business to move there.

Worse yet, (for us) the billions of dollars that went overseas largely had to be borrowed. In other words, the Obama administration borrowed money from countries like China to send money to countries like Mexico. Nice. It’s this kind of spending that naturally has led to this administration’s racking up $6.6 trillion in national debt, bringing our total national debt to more than $17 trillion while simultaneously creating financial incentives for outsourcing U.S. jobs.

A favorite Thomas Sowell quote immediately comes to mind: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

Given the path paved by this administration, I simply can’t see why anyone should be surprised with local companies, regardless of who owns them, downsizing or pulling out of New Hampshire.